


Fading Stars

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: F/M, fucking friday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:05:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2685401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the show she seeks him out, lingers until the tent has cleared and waits for him to come to her. He does, still wearing the ridiculous performance outfit. It doesn’t suit him, but he looks at home in it. It’s difficult for her to imagine him uncomfortable, though, and just that thought makes her want to challenge it.</p>
<p>“A clown,” she says, “that’s not what I expected.”</p>
<p>“War reporter, that’s exactly what I expected.”</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>3xDx3. Across years and wars they keep running into each other, it seems neither of them can quite let go of the war that forged them. Violence, unsafe sex, fairly explicit sex, strangulation, pegging, some D/s and light humiliation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fading Stars

She becomes a war reporter. Skirmishes will always break out on earth, and so that is where she'll be.

When she told Relena, proudly and privately amused, Relena had given her such a look — wide eyed and somehow still innocent and asked: What war? Because Relena saw the larger picture between the colonies and the Earth, had grown up with a heart set on peace and even now, Dorothy knew, Relena didn’t understand the heart of humanity. It was one of the reasons she loved Relena, because as much as Relena grew and learned and carried with her — a great leader, a wonderful beautiful queen — there was always a part of Relena who was that hopeful idealistic girl. It was Relena’s skill at bridging the gap between ideals and practice that made her a fierce politician. The tension between those two sides of Relena, that was where her truth strength was. But it was also the sword Relena would someday die on, and Dorothy knew that too. She just hoped she would be there to capture the moment. Because she loves her, of course. That is a kind of kindness, too.

She travels to remote places, finds war torn cities or countries. Her favorite are the small intimate wars that are almost over. Her coworkers call her a herald of peace, because she arrives during the height of conflict and always stays until a side has proclaimed victory. Dorothy doesn’t explain it, if they don’t understand than they’re only animals, but when she was a teenager she had a love affair with war. She still loves it, in her own way, because nothing is like it. Soldiers will sometimes pick up on it, when she asks them questions. They ask her if she served, or if she had a lover who did. Sometimes they don’t ask but she can see how they shift, watch her warily, assume she played a part in bloodshed. Like always calls to like. The weary soldiers too, see their kinship in her, offer her unwanted advice or tell her she should stop chasing wars.

Sometimes, she plays along. Yes, war is terrible, yes she’s tired of the fighting, yes, soon she’ll stop.

Sometimes, they know she’s lying. An old soldier, he lost his left hand in frigid combat over two decades ago, catches her by the wrist after an interview. He smiles, knowingly, and thanks her for her work. He says, I couldn’t stop either. It never changes. That night she drinks half a bottle of wine and only stops because it’s her turn to use the bathroom the reporters share and if she misses out she’ll be dirty for another week with no bath or shower on the road.

The next one will be my last one, she tells herself because she’s drunk and only slightly numb.

—

The next war she goes to was sudden. Almost overnight the city split in two and it blossomed across the next two neighboring metropolises. It seared through the refugees and ate up roads. When Dorothy arrived hasty peace walls had been constructed because this was a dirty war. Another reporter tells her that the guerrilla tactics extended to putting bombs in corpses, poisoning water supplies, targeting civilian spaces and hospitals.

It smells like blood and shit.

And, among the gaunt faces and already too worn expressions, there is a circus. A group of traveling performers that had been visiting when war broke out. Performances were every other night. For free.

She visits a show, curious, and finds the performers eccentric. They show is good — breathtaking, funny, the perfect way to lighten the mood. But she can tell. There’s a way that the young woman throws knives that betray her as a professional — more than just a performer. The ringmaster has a keen eye and plays the crowd. The group of clowns have fluid confident grace she’s only seen in refugees and people who have overcome trauma.

And then there’s him. She remembers him from the war. He’s the target for the knifethrowing and wears such a face she could never mistake him from anyone else. It’s more than fearless, the same solid steel all of the Gundam pilots must possess. And, he performs on the highwire — cartwheels, flips, even dropping down off of it to swing on it like a singular parallel bar.

it’s the way he watches the crowd though, that draws her in. He looks at them like she does — gauging who is a soldier, who is not, who doesn’t belong. When their eyes meet she sees the minute furrow of his brow — he’s sighted her predatory nature for what it is.

After the show she seeks him out, lingers until the tent has cleared and waits for him to come to her. He does, still wearing the ridiculous performance outfit. It doesn’t suit him, but he looks at home in it. It’s difficult for her to imagine him uncomfortable, though, and just that thought makes her want to challenge it.

“A clown,” she says, “that’s not what I expected.”

“War reporter, that’s exactly what I expected.” But his eyes flick to the side, towards the entrance to the circus tent. “Did you need something?” He’s dismissing her so easily.

“What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” he balances on one foot and slips off the overly large shoe. He repeats the gesture and then steps out of the giant ballooning pants. Then he stands there in front of her in trim leggings and strips out of the other ruffles, shirt, removes the mask. Everything is folded up quickly and, barefoot, he moves past her. “We’re taking down the tent, tonight.”

“Running away?” She means it to be a challenge. He looks over his shoulder at her, deceptively polite.

“Did you want a belated interview, for your organization?”

“Maybe I did, or maybe I know that you’re here as more than just a performer.” It’s a guess, she thinks that perhaps his old habits just die hard, but the muscle that runs down his back near his shoulderblade tenses, even if the rest of him is still and calm.

“Little girls should go home.”

She’s furious, and follows him out of the tent. She’s tenacious, she’s one of the best, but he’s gone and didn’t even seem to leave footprints behind.

The circus packs up and disappears into the night. Strangely, as well, the opposing forces found their vehicles disabled, their supplies soiled and their ammunition stolen. It was a clean job, from her sources, and no one was even killed. And, like many of these small scale wars, the fighting will dissipate, the fanatics will run to their deaths and it will be over.

She feels disappointed.

—

The conflict in Gravelines is a joke — the city is too small to be useful and yet the walls are being torn down and people are rebelling. They don’t even know what for. Dorothy sees them as hungry dogs, snapping at whatever comes their way. It’s invigorating.

She moves to the heart of the star-shaped city, where the fighting is the worst. It’s not even a real war, but the people are restless and the government is trying — and it isn’t enough. They, as always, need someone to lead them. They need a Relena, or a Treize, or anyone to step up and be their figure to direct the chaos.

Instead they sniff their own ass and take a shit over everything.

Her company won’t publish that, of course, but she drops it on the air anyway. She insults the rebels and she insults the government. She stands in the middle of the rubble and demands they all become better. This is the sad state of human conflict, now. She says.

She reports from the same spot every day, she does a tally of deaths, of property damage, of how long the conflict has been going on. Day sixty-seven, she stands there and a group of police move in. She follows them, she doesn’t stay the recommended distance away.

A young cop, his name is Murphy or Kelly or something, stays by her side and tells her she should go. She says of course she won’t go, she’s a reporter. Kelly, or Murphy’s, partner is shot and killed in the head. The brain matter and bone and blood, there’s so much blood, floods them both and Dorothy can feel her hair grow heavy with it. And then Murphy, his name is Murphy, pushes her down and says — “You really should’ve gone home, miss. I hope you make it out.”

His body shudders above hers, heavy and wet with his partner’s blood. And then shudders again. He breathes on her, gasps, and starts crying. He can’t feel his legs, he says and she hears the rhythmic thud of bullets. Then she hears an explosion and the uneven tapping noise of garbage shrapnel. It’s not the hunks of debris that a proper bomb would toss, but it’s nails or broken glass that is rolled into a cheap bomb. She knows how to make one, once a rebel group showed her how when she was still new at this.

She huddles under his body, and he dies. He lost control of his bowels, during his death, but she didn’t notice until hours later when he is stiff and cold and she can feel a seeping onto her knees that isn’t blood. The stench is awful. She doesn’t push his body away, everything seems frozen.

Dorothy isn’t afraid. But she is sick. Her face is flushed, her skin is cold she feels nauseous. Her arms have lost their strength and she continues to lay there.

It’s night, before someone finds her. Before he finds her. She hasn’t seen him since the circus, since the night he disappeared on her and she didn’t get her story and didn’t get her victory against him. He pulls Murphy’s body away and looks down at her and in the dark she can’t tell what expression he’s wearing.

“Do you want to gloat?” She asks, but her voice is raw and comes out a pained whimper. He crouches down, looks past her into the ground, the rock and bend rebar.

“Your hair is caught.”

“Cut it.”

“I could untangle it.”

She slaps him. All her strength returns and she slaps him, open handed, and it barely moves his face. She can feel her hysteria, the knowledge that she’s filthy and her legs are covered in the shit of a deadman and her clothes are soaked with his blood and the knowledge that she doesn’t even care that much, not about his death.

“Cut it, you stupid bastard. Or do you think to spare me some kind of womanly pity? Wouldn’t you be glad to see me so pathetic and hope that I’d cry?”

He has scissors, shears, the kind that are used for clothes in hospitals. The uniform he wears is that of an emergency worker, the circus wasn’t in town. She should ask about it, but instead she lets him gather her forward, cut her hair. She allows him to stay kneeling next to her as he trims with unusual efficiency, shapes her hair after he cuts it.

“You’re filthy.” He says. It doesn’t look like he cares, really.

“Take me back to your place, let me use your shower.” She demands.

At first, it seems like he might refuse. He wears that unfriendly face of his, crosses his arms and the scissors dangle from his fingertips. Then he nods, just once.

“I feel sorry for you.”

She knows it’s a move to box her in, because if she argues he will leave her in her filth. So she presses her lips together, stands without his help and lets him lead the way.

The hotel he is staying at is fancy, she can tell it isn’t his first choice. He seems almost proud to parade her and her dirty, bloody, clothes through the foyer. The front desk worker gives him a look, one that promises a heavy fine on his room. He asks to have more towels sent up, and also dinner, and, perhaps, some liquor.

The room is a suite. She’s impressed and say so. He points her to the shower.

Without her long hair the shower takes much less time than normal. She marvels at the shortness of the cut, and in the full length mirror thinks she should add bangs, later. Oddly, her fingers tremble when she washes the feces from her legs and blood from her chest. They thrum with the same shudder that Murphy had when he died.

There are no clean clothes, so she walks back into the suite naked. He throws her a pair of pants — his pants — immediately.

“We’re close in height.” Is the explanation. He’s right and she doesn’t even have to roll the cuffs. For a moment he stares at her chest and she raises an eyebrow. “A shirt.” He adds and tosses her one of those.

“Am I too much of a woman for you?”

“Usually when I take care of people they don’t need them.”

“You didn’t take care of me. You hardly did anything for me. If you wouldn’t have come along, I would have pushed myself up. You’re entirely unnecessary.”

“What’s the point in pretending?” The room service arrives. It’s a spread of meats and cheeses, there’s liquor. “Hungry?”

She’s ravenous. She eats with her hands and he pours them drinks. He doesn’t eat, but he does take three shots before he slows down.

“Did you quit the circus?”

“No, I’m taking a break.”

“And your break means that you come to war torn cities and help with the relief.” She smirks. “Don’t give me that. I know who and what you are, you can’t fool me.”

He looks into the glass of whiskey. He isn’t like the other soldiers she interviewed, not like this. There’s a stillness to him which infuriates her. The sort of centered calmness she remembers from the war, she hated in him just as she hated the softness of Quatre Winner.

“You’re awfully interested in me.” It’s almost a come on the way he says it, thoughtful, carefully, voice laden with the kind of flat accuracy that makes it just ambiguous enough for someone to make assumptions. He would be a great orator, she thinks, because he can control his voice like this. Not the kind of speaker who rallies people, but the perfect balance to a firebrand like Relena or Dorothy herself.

“Of course, how many people have you killed?” She lets her smile sharpen. “I’m not just bloodthirsty, but you understand the art of war.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You’re the one who brought me to his hotel room.”

“Was that the first time someone died on you?”

Murphy shuddering against her. The feeling of his blood on her. He hoped she would get away and she’d never been worried about dying. She didn’t — something in her face must have given her away. Trowa holds out the whiskey to her.

“Do you do this with everyone you try to take care of?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you want out of it?” She tossed her head, usually her hair would form a wave and settle around her neck. It was an imperious movement. Instead her shorter hair just fanned out, blurred her vision and then curled in towards her face. “Money? Sex?”

“None of that.”

“Everyone wants something.”

“Yes, everyone does.”

She bares her teeth at him and takes a drink from the bottle, not even bothering to pour herself a glass. “Then?”

“Do you want me to want something from you? Would it be easier if I made demands from you?” It sounds almost curious, the way he speaks. “You mentioned it earlier, that I would be here to gloat. Is that what you want?”

The picture of him standing over her and gloating made her shiver. Dorothy lets her lip curl, perfect disdain.

“Do you just give people what they want? It’s no wonder you don’t have any luck with girls, or is it boys you’re after? Is that why you didn’t think to give me a shirt?”

He holds his hand out for the bottle again. She takes a long pull before passing it back.

“It doesn’t really matter.”

“You like them all, huh. What a pervert. Is that how you made it through the war, then?” She leans forward. Between them is the coffee table, the cheese and meats that she hadn’t eaten, a knife, a fork, two napkins. “It isn’t uncommon, I’ve found.”

“We can have sex, if you want. If you want I’ll even treat you as a proper woman instead of a little girl who can’t cry.” Trowa shrugs, “That’s probably not what you want to hear, but you still sound so young to me.”

But she does. Dorothy knows something inside of her is frantic. It can’t be Murphy’s death, she has never cared too much for sentimentality and she is old enough and jaded enough not to believe that young men sent to war will survive. She knows what she asks for when she asks for bloodshed and power. Conflict is what the world was born in and what it will carry with it into the future.

She craves Relena’s tenderness and hope, in that moment.

A small traitorous part of her wants to cry about Murphy, a little. Because he had been a fool and he had laid on top of her as he was shot and the explosions went off. What an idiot. He should have known better.

“All right.” She says.

He stays seated for a moment, takes another drink from the bottle. Then he stands, stretches, crosses his arms. “And how do you want to do it?”

Negotiations.

“Treat me like a queen.”

And he does. He takes her hand and leads her to the bed and instead of climbing in he holds her from behind and kisses her neck. He feathers his fingers through her hair and gently coaxes her skin to redden and admit that he’s marked her. He undresses them both, neatly and quickly and without leering or fondling her. The gentleness surprises her, and even more so when he lays her back against the sheets and the pillows and teases her breasts with his tongue and teeth — but only lightly. He worships her, keeps his head bowed.

Every movement is respectful. He trails his fingers down her skin, knuckles ask permission to spread her legs and when he kisses down to her navel he waits for her to shove his head lower. She has to concentrate on him, to return his gentleness with her own softness. Dorothy isn’t used to it. She isn’t used to his angular shoulders or far too talented tongue either. She prefers soldiers with rough hands behind barracks and battlefields and she prefers them on their knees before her, or with her bending them over a hard surface.

It does, though, take her mind off of Murphy. And for a while she is far away from the wars, she is queen of the bedroom and when he leans over her and they kiss, lips to lips for the first time, she could imagine him to be any lover she wanted.

Despite the foreplay he fucks her clinically. Even the soft kisses don’t distract from the way he looks at her, as if she’s nothing. It cuts her to the bone and she feels like he can see her thoughts — the need to get away, the need to forget, the need to apologize to Murphy who’s now dead — and she slaps him. It’s not a hard slap, she’s on her back and he’s fucking her but the sound is louder than his body against hers. He doesn’t stop, and she doesn’t want him to, then, just keeps the same pace, the same mind numbingly even tempo.

It doesn’t hurt, but she feels raw when he pulls out and fingers her clit until she comes and he jerks off into her thighs and the mess is hot and tacky and doesn’t remind her at all of the shit from Murphy’s bowels but it brings her back to her body. She curls up and bites the expensive comforter and feels a sob build up. He curls around her, works an arm under her and holds her tightly against him as she cries and muffles her screaming with the bed.

In truth, Dorothy doesn’t know why she’s so upset. There’s a disconnect between the events, between herself.

“You’re a terrible lay.” She says, when the sobs have left her. She feels hollow and curls down into herself tighter. His weight against her back is heavy and the arm under her is too bony to be comfortable, but she’s grounded by it. “If I was queen, I would execute you.”

“Over your tears?”

“Because you failed to perform at your very best. I should have just gotten a dog to fuck me.”

She feels his breath against her neck and the way his chest and stomach shift, barely, as he doesn’t say anything but continues to breathe. In, out, in, out. Her breathing moves to match his.

“You could have.”

“I won’t let you again.”

“All right.”

The game is ending again, and she will lose to him again. Dorothy frowns.

“Next time — “

“No,” he interrupts her.

“What?”

“Don’t plan anything. If we meet again we’ll figure it out then.” He’s quiet but insistent.

“Not into commitment at all, are you?”

“You’re the one who will be disappointed.” Trowa shifts away from her then. “You can stay the night, if you want.”

She does. They shower separately and sleep on opposite sides of the bed and when she wakes up in the morning he's already gone. When she dresses she traces a circle on her inner thigh, remembers how it felt to be stained there by blood, by shit, by him.

\--

War takes her to Madrid.

She stays in a hostel, instead of with the other reporters, and she leaves before it's over. There is something wrong and twisted inside of her when she looks out across everything and the way the bombs have driven cracks through the cityscape.

She takes vacation. Just a month, and her company allows it. They say her work has been very good, she hasn't taken a vacation before, they'll be happy when she returns, of course.

Dorothy tries space again. She walks the sterile halls of the colonies, spaceships, satellites. She indulges in tours, views of the earth, spectacular hanging gardens in L4. If she doesn't pause and keeps moving, it's almost fun.

Her thumb gets shredded against the cap of a bottle of sparkling cider, three days before she is to return to earth and return to her work. She sits in her rented room and sucks on her thumb and tastes her own blood and it makes her sick.

\--

She is tired. The wars are beginning to blur together. Her work is good, it's always very good, and they all love her sharp insight, her challenging style, the way she never hesitates to go where the fighting is worst. She keeps her hair short, in a mock of the bob that Trowa cut for her after she died underneath a young man who thought he was protecting someone innocent. She gives herself bangs, too, lets them soften her face. It's a good look, she's been told, because it makes her look more innocent until people get a good look at her.

They meet again, at what used to be Picadilly Circus in old London. He almost walks past her, but she snags his wrist. He almost, then, strikes at her, but pulls the motion into a caress, fingers just brushing against her bangs.

"Hey," he says.

"Been a while," she smirks and tugs him closer. People shift around them, crowds never pay attention to stationary objects, except as obstructions. Especially not here, at the edge of the skirmishes, when the crowds just want to go home and hope they're not a bombing target. "Were you running away from me?"

"I do have a job," they maneuver away, down the flight of steps that used to lead to the subways. The tunnels have long ago been filled with concrete, but it affords a small private alcove, just out of sight from prying eyes. "I thought that's why you were here."

"Are you a soldier again? No, something better than that, did you decide to become one of those toy soldiers instead? What are they. . . _Preventers_?"

In one step he's pressed close to her, pushes her back against the hard concrete. The strong hard bar of his forearm is held against her neck. His expression hasn't changed, though, and she is taller than him in her heels and can look down her nose at him.

"No." He answers, applies some of his weight to her throat.

"Come on, you may be a liar but I'm hardly foolish. Soldiers can't go idle for long, I've made my career off of people like you. You chase conflict until you die in your own shit." Because she remembers. And she laughs. He isn't pressing hard enough to even make her voice shake so she jerks her chin at him. "This isn't what I want, haven't we already gone over this? Or was the negotiation just a cover so you could have your way with me, here? Maybe it turns you on to know that they could hear, but I think -- I know, what's different about you."

He blinks once. Then Trowa's hand knuckles against her side, bruises against her ribs once and then curls up to stroke the underside of her breast through her shirt and bra. It's strangely cruel and impersonal and affectionate.

Dorothy laughs. She steps forward, just enough to angle her knee against his groin and shove. Instead of stepping back he bends forward, again his head is bowed.

"I'm not a Preventer, I work in recovery and emergency services." He says.

She walks him backwards in a shuffling punishing step, knee still firmly pressed against him, until his back hits the wall. Then she tugs his arm away from her neck, it only takes the barest of touches to get him to drop it.

"Did you have enough of the fighting?" She too can do impersonal affection. She smooths his hair from his face, cups his cheeks and looks into his eyes. His eyes aren't solid green, there's an angry blotch of brown around the pupil in his left eye and a thin sliver of gold in his right.

"No."

That makes her laugh again, hard and mocking and she presses her forearm to his throat this time. She leans with all of her body weight, immediately, quickly. Dorothy doesn't know how much pressure it takes to break a man's windpipe and she doesn't know if he would care or if he would fight her on it. It's something like trust, to go into the unknown this way, she thinks, amused.

His breath catches and his body goes stiff under her.

It's not enough, she realizes, even as she grinds with her knee. Something expectant hangs between them and even when she lifts up to the balls of her feet and rocks forward in her heels his eyes track off to the side.

"Don't you dare look away from me." She snaps, the hollow ringing of a bombshell going off in the far distance catches in her ribcage. "Last time I said I should have just fucked a dog, I misspoke. You're just as good as a dog, aren't you?"

His left eye almost turns brown as the pupil swells and expands, swallowing the green.

She shoves him, just once, with her arm and her knee and he wheezes even as she steps back. Her own breath is short, her cheeks flushed and it feels like chasing war all over again. Trowa rubs at his throat and Dorothy straightens her clothes.

"Next time, don't disappoint me." She says.

The smile he gives her is only a little mocking and mostly secretive. "Next time, we'll see what happens."

It sounds like an invitation.

\--

She invites him to her home, the one she bought when she started her reporting job on the river in an old city with an arch, the next time. It's an old fashioned invitation, written on paper and stamped and sealed and she doesn't know where to send it but she sends it to the Preventers with _attn: Trowa Barton_ on it.

He sends her a reply, in the same fashion, but written on the back of a section cut from a paper bag, not sealed and processed from a small mail room in Okinawa. He's too far for a casual call, maybe the next time he's in the area.

Again, she sends his letter to the Preventers. And again he replies in a similar fashion, this time it's processed from a military base in Russia. Maybe next time.

The third letter she sends is six months after the first and there's no response. The emptiness in her stomach consumes her and she goes chasing a war in Brazil.

\--

She's at the hospital because someone threw containers of homemade chlorine gas at them. They rinsed her down, scrubbed her raw and checked her over for lasting damage. Dorothy insists she's fine, because she is, because they were used to that and had bandanas to cover their faces and run when the first container hit.

Nearby there is a man who has lost a leg and an eye and is probably going to die.

She wants to leave but it will take time to discharge her and they tuck her away into the corner of the waiting room and tell her not to leave, please stay, please don't make this any harder on anyone. Another gurney goes by. A dead body is carried out because they can't spare the gurneys. Someone's baby is crying and won't shut up. A coldness travels down Dorothy's spine until it settles in her toes and she's rooted to the spot.

It's midnight, when he comes in. Somehow she finds him immediately in the chaos. Trowa stumbles in, leaning sideways under the weight of a soldier he's carried in. He catches a doctor and they whisper, intensely and then head down the hall out of sight. He leaves behind three trails of blood and she wonders if any of it is his.

By the next morning someone has given her the clear to go and instead she prowls through the hospital halls looking for him. She finds him inside an examination room that has been converted into another miniature ward for patients that can sit up. Through the doorway she can see him sitting next to the soldier he brought in -- a young woman who's face is covered in bandages, but still looks familiar somehow, who has a cast on her arm and something is horrifically wrong with her leg. Trowa is holding the young woman's other hand and saying something low and urgent.

Dorothy can see, because he's not wearing a jacket but the sleeveless undershirt that's regulation with the local army, the rope burns on his wrists and the long rectangular scar that runs up his arm -- from wrist to shoulder. It wasn't there before.

It's another hour before he leaves the room and seeks her out, down the hall, near the vending machines with coffee.

"I'm not surprised to see you here." He says.

"I thought you weren't fighting anymore?" She doesn't resist the urge to touch the new scar, it's just barely begun to pinken and skin over, "But you must make exceptions."

"It's a favor to a friend," there's something in his voice that unsettles her. "I wasn't ignoring your letter, but there were things more important, at the time."

"You're awful."

"Can I still take you up on the offer?"

"You're going to stay here the night, aren't you? To check in on your friend there."

"Yes."

"I'll pick you up tomorrow, I got cleared and I need to go take a shower and eat something that isn't this disgusting swill." Her fingers move from his arm to the cup of coffee in his hand and steady it. Ripples move across the muddy surface and he shrugs, almost capsizing it.

"Tomorrow evening then. I have a few other people to see as well."

When she gets to her extended stay room she researches. The young woman Trowa had been with is Nathifa Winner, one of Quatre's many sisters. Dorothy wonders how many of the Winner children have gone to war over the years. She sleeps well, solidly, for ten hours and then buys supplies. She makes herself a luxurious breakfast in the kitchenette and watches the news.

The odd thing about war, for her, is how some pockets of a city or a country could go along as if nothing happened. Other places would be completely overrun. Safe zones were only so safe for so long. Soon, she imagined, this extended stay and the hospital, would have to be evacuated. The streets she had walked for groceries and other things would be deserted and eventually everything would be burned down.

It was a fact of life. Her juice tasted bitter and she wasted away the day, until the evening.

He hasn't showered and the young woman he was with is gone. There's a hollowness to his face when she strides into the hospital and finds him sitting in the waiting room, hands clutching a simple black phone.

"Do you want more time to brood?" Dorothy asks. He snorts, stands, and she plucks at the blood stained shirt. "I bet you don't have a change of clothes either. Good thing we're the same height."

Trowa smirks at that, tilts his head towards her, "Lead the way."

She offers him food, once they get to her borrowed room. He declines, looks around with the steady practiced eye of a soldier. Then he stays by the door while she moves further in, while she sits on the couch arm and looks back at him.

"Did she die?" Dorothy asks. "She didn't look so bad, yesterday, but I know how war wounds go. Maybe quick infection, or a clot, or some other hidden damage?"

"No. Do you still fantasize about being a queen?" The shirt comes off, then his shoes and socks and pants. She watches with a critical eye. The scar on his arm is unnatural, she decides, someone must have cut his skin that way, deliberately. There are no other deliberate marks that she can see, but there is a deep gash, barely healed, that looks like a mobile suit harness cut into his skin. 

She doesn't remove her own shirt, but slides out of her skirt and leaves her heels on. Her fingers crook and she beckons to him like one would a dog.

"I am a queen." She says, loftily. He goes to her. She circles his neck with her hands, squeezes once experimentally. It's unlikely that she would be able to strangle him, with her hands alone. Dorothy is a fencer and she knows how to shoot a gun, but her right hand isn't big enough to fit around his neck with enough pressure and her left hand is too weak. "But a benevolent queen, I even got a gift for scum like you. Be sure to thank me."

Trowa raises an eyebrow and she can tell he's amused. The mirth fades though when she offers him the collar. It's the kind that would be used on a dog, with plastic coating the metal links to prevent pinching. It's not the kind of collar you would ever use on a person, but months ago she had looked into the wide leather collars with their buckles and found them clumsy. He could always refuse, of course, but she watches his face carefully.

There are no negotiations. There's something like relief in his body language when he takes the collar from her and drops it over his neck. Neither of them are fools and Dorothy has been with enough men and women who balk and those who are savvy and kind and discuss limits. They are neither of those kinds of people, or they are too exhausted with themselves to be so.

She snaps a lead to the collar and tugs, experimentally. The chain makes a muffled rattle and constricts around his neck. When she releases the tension in the lead the collar stays snug and Trowa hooks a finger under it to give himself some breathing room. She won't bind his hands, then.

Dorothy leans back and spreads her knees and draws him down between them. "Repay me." She demands. He hesitates and she laughs low in the back of her throat. "Where's your courage, soldier? Does the sight of my pussy make you uneasy? Haven't you ever pleasured a real woman? Or did you call me a little girl before to soothe your own ego? You _dog._ "

Another tug of the leash, he doesn't loosen it as much, and leans down between her legs. He's not as clumsy as her accusations, there's a practiced delicate way to how he strokes her through the thin fabric of her underwear and then only after she's wet them, draws them down.

He's too teasing. The light touches at the inside of her knees, her thighs, the way he circles his thumb around her clit but doesn't touch it. She hisses and draws her knees together, boxes his ears with them and then wraps the leash around her hand a few times to shorten the length. With one pull, one lean back, she can hear the plastic strain around the lengths of chain around his neck and feel his shortened breath against her.

"I want to come before you can breathe again." She demands of him. His hands find her knees and pry them away from his head and there's a renewed desperation to his mouth. His teeth graze her lower lips, her thighs, he studiously pinches and twists at her in a way that would be too rough except for the warmth of pleasure she feels when she hears his wet choke against her. The tongue inside her is skilled, but his breathing labors, shudders and his face bumps against her wetness carelessly.

His fingers bruise her knees and his right thumbnail breaks the skin the same instant she is brought to orgasm. She barely has time to think to untwine the leash from her hand, riding the pleasure out as he falls back and she dimly hears him scrabble on the floor.

When she rolls over on the couch, heels thunking against the carpet when she rights herself, she sees him laying there, three fingers underneath the chain of the collar, eyes glassy, but breathing. Her eyes trace the lines of his body, linger on the red around his neck and the swollen hardness of his cock.

"Pig." Her voice sends a low shiver through him. She leans over, not close enough to touch, yet, "You like this don't you? You're a filthy animal. Do you hate yourself for it? One of the greatest pilots in history and you want to be strangled by someone who you called pathetic! But that's what you really want, isn't it. Someone who can see you for what you are, who knows how soldiers are who can't stop killing. You're not like the good boys who wake up crying because they've killed someone, are you? You're so much worse because you wake up wanting to cry because you can't."

The full body shudder he gives sends a prickle of delight down her skin.

"Talk back to me."

"You're not correct." An odd slip, the answer should have been 'you're not right' but instead he had used 'correct', as if it wasn't his first tongue. Maybe it wasn't.

Dorothy drags him over to the table that is standard in the extended stay rooms. It's not a true drag, he doesn't deadweight her and instead eagerly stumbles to the wood. A quick mental guess and she figures it's too tall for her to strangle him and see his face so she grabs his hair and stretches, bending him forward until his chin rests on the edge of the tabletop. That leaves his cock trapped between his body and the wood, the other edge of the table cutting into his hips and thighs. His rapid breathing has nothing to do with the early strangulation.

"Should I make you beg for it?"

The muscles in his back betray the laugh he holds in.

"I don't beg." His voice is cool and she knows that's a limit they won't be testing.

"Some men like it, to be brought to that." She leans across his back, not careful with her body at all, and he hisses as their combined weight presses down on his erection. Her fingers catch the collar and she rotates it, so the ring that connects it to the leash is in the back.

"I don't beg." He says again.

The leash is left against his back, slack, as she tells him to stay and walks to the bathroom. It only takes her a few seconds to slide into the harness and only a few more to grab the small bottle of lubricant, and her reporter's bag, but she waits almost five minutes before returning.

Trowa's turned his face so he's laying on his cheek, eyes fixed on the wall in a blank way that tells her he's gone someplace in his head. It infuriates her a little, it's never happened to her before. People _wait_ for her, anticipate her.

With a brutal twist of her fingernails against the scars on his back she brings him back to her. The soft gasp -- hardly pained -- tells her he's with her again. She marks his skin with pale furrows that pink immediately but are nothing compared to the scarring there. She doesn't warn him, scratching his back with one hand and pushing a dry finger into him with the other. He whines at the intrusion and his hips twitch.

"I've never fucked a dog so eager." She only teases with the one dry finger, before dripping the lube down between his cheeks and sliding her thumb up to catch it, her whole hand moving from the small of his back down to his balls, slicking the whole stretch of sensitive skin there.

He's silent, even when her voice gets rough and she insults him again and again and even when she doesn't stretch him but just shoves the dildo in, one hard motion that leaves their bodies pressed together. She can read his mood in his back, though. The bunch of muscles at his shoulders that tense and relax and tense again. The quickening of her breath and she images his pupils wide, but not quite there. His body curls, a little, stretches out, he tries to adjust to her pressure with his his breath and willpower.

She forces his hips down, hard, uses them for leverage against him as she slides out and then rocks back in. He breathes. She fucks him with enough force to rock the table and her wrists strain with the tension, but everything in his posture and the quiet gasps tell her he hasn't gotten off yet.

Frustrated she releases his hips and pulls back on the leash. His gasps get quieter but more desperate. Her other hand fumbles for her reporter's bag and she pulls out the small camera. His head turns, slightly at the noise. She catches a view of his flushed cheeks and almost angry eye, before the surprise telegraphs across his face.

She smirks, pulls back so just the very end of the dildo stretches him open. "One for the scrapbook, dog." And she pushes in again, snaps the picture and the resounding whirr of the camera pulls his expression into something vaguely like panic. But then the panic is overwhelmed by a shudder even he can't control and she knows he's spilled semen across the tabletop.

Dorothy rocks him into a few more times for good measure, each one yanking a hard choked sound from him and then pulls out and lets go of the leash. Again he has to struggle with the chain around his neck and remains sprawled across the tabletop. She watches his fingers fumble, catch the collar, and then finally tug enough space so he could inhale raggedly.

"You can stay, if you want." She offers.

He flashes her the oddest smirk, part drowsy post-sex satisfaction and part something else. But he shakes his head and says in a raspy voice, "Work, tomorrow."

Trowa does stay long enough to shower, to clean the table and leave a tip for the housekeepers. She finds that amusing and when he leaves she catches his hand, presses her fingernails into his skin.

"Next time. . .?" She prompts.

He shrugs. "I don't plan to be caught in this situation again." It's clear he's referring to Nathifa Winner, Dorothy wonders if the girl lost her leg, at the very least. She licks her lips.

"Then maybe you should just come by sometime, without waiting for a war to start." It's a challenge, because she doesn't _need_ anyone. She enjoys this, sex with him, but she enjoys meeting him on the battlefield too -- she tells herself. It's more fun when they're allies. She doesn't think about how tired combat has made her, recently.

"I don't wait for them to start, they never stop."

He leaves, without a way to contact him and he doesn't ask for her address or phone number or email.

\--

She finds out that Nathifa Winner did lose her leg, and a finger. And months after she's retrieved from combat the media reveals that Nathifa contracted an infection and she loses the rest of that hand. She's a poster child for PTSD and war recovery and there are larger media and community pushes to end what someone dubbed the Petty Wars.

It makes Dorothy sick.

Her job means that she has to interview people like Nathifa. Like Murphy. Like the old soldiers she was comfortable with but now were being told that their lives were worth more as martyrs. She hated it. Every interview she did grew more tense until she had lost it, live, on the air and accused someone of being a worthless, spineless traumatized worm.

Her company gave her leave, three months paid because they felt they owed it to her. Her immediate boss sent her a book on war reporter trauma, as if her outburst was related to PTSD. Dorothy had sneered and thrown the book out.

She thought about going back to space.

Dorothy is packed, mostly, when she realizes she hates space. She's never felt more alive here, chasing wars or looking for the lean shadow of Trowa in hospitals and around corners.

So she unpacks. She goes to the balcony on her house that overlooks the muddy Mississippi river and calls to cancel her shuttle tickets.

Maybe she'll just stay here, for a while.

\--

It's almost a year before she sees him again. She is still a war reporter, but her assignments are all tame and don't involve veterans. She researches and writes reports and catalogs the history of bloodshed. It must be her age, but she doesn't mind it as much as she thought.

Sometimes, though, she'll spend hours reading and the words will strangle her and all she can think is that humanity has had nothing to offer the world, ever. Dorothy remembers herself as a young girl who had felt loss so sharply she had let it cut straight through her, leaving behind a small slender gap.

He walks right up to her front door, knocks. She watched him from the second floor window, and waits until he rings the doorbell, too, before descending the stairs. He didn't come in a car, but the closest bus stop is an hour's walk.

She doesn't let him in. He doesn't ask to be let in.

"I was in the area." He says. Her eyes trace his face, there's a new scar on his chin, underneath, like someone tried to shove a knife into his brain from below. "I saw that interview." A tiny smirk.

"They couldn't fire me," she laughs, it's fake humor, "I'm too good. And no one is just in this area."

"I am. It isn't a skirmish, but this is a river city, there's always something." She knew, there was some trouble down on the ferryways, but it was mild, not even worth _her_ time, she wondered how it could be worth his. Unless, perhaps, another favor from another friend.

"Thought I'd pass you this." It's a slip of paper and a small plastic rectangle -- a razor, inside of a pink cover. She accepts both, unsheathes the razor and tests the edge. It's wicked sharp. "My number."

"And now you give me this," she mocks, "Are you that desperate to be told how worthless you are again?"

"No, but we're both older now, aren't we?" He shrugs. "You must have enjoyed it, too."

And there's the razor. She recovers it, slips it into her pocket.

"Next time, when I call, if you don't come then it's off."

"All right."

Negotiations.

She shoos at him with her hands, urging him back down the road he walked. He goes without another word, slipping off to the side, down the grassy field and she knows there must be a motorcycle or a field worker's truck hidden down there. The fastest way to the river would be down through the woods and the sloping ground there.

Dorothy closes the door after he vanishes from sight and picks up her phone. She calls Relena.

"Miss Relena, it's been a while, I hope I'm not interrupting anything. . ."


End file.
